
.3 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



II li mil mi im in 

012 028 973 1 



pemriAtipe* 
pH8.5 



o 



- 

. H + 5 



A DDRESS 



OF TIIH 






fll 



n 



on a rn 



U 



Mil 



1 

J 



lAii ubm:mu 



mn n 






















/ 



COM M ITT E E. 



// 




PHILADELPHIA: 
PKINTED AT "THE AGE" OF PICK. 

1 8 6 3 . 



ADDEBSS 



OF THE 



DEMOCRATIC STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE. 



To the People of Ptwnsyteania : 

An important election is at handy and the 
issues involved in it m,y n.w claim your at- 
tention. The tide of war has been rolled hack 
from our borders; and with thanks to God, 
and gratitude to the skill and valor which, 
by his favor, achieved the prompt deliver- 
ance of our invaded Commonwealth, we 
may now give our solemn consideration to 
the causes that have brought to its present 
condition a country once peaceful, umted 
and secure. It is now the scene of a great 
civil war, between States that lately minis- 
tered to each other's prosperity in a -Union 
founded for their common good. It was 
this Union that gave them peace at home 
and V( . s p,ct abroad. They coped snecess- 
fullywith Great Britain on the ocean, and 
,he'" doctrine" uttered by President Mon- 
roe warned off the monarchs of Europe from ] 
ihevdiolcAmcncancontincnt. NoW,France 
carves out of it an empire, and ships built 
in En-land plunder our commerce on even 
B ea A great public debt and a conscription 
* burden the people. The strength and wealth 
of the nation arc turned from productive m- 
dustrv and consumed in the destructive arts 
of war Our victories fail to win peace. 
Throughout the land, arbitrary powe* en- 
croaches upon civil liberty. 

What has wrought the disastrous change 
No natural causes embroiled the North and 
the South, Their interchangcalde products 



and commodities, and various institutions, 
were sources of reciprocal benefit, and ex- 
cluded competition and strifej But an arti- 
ficial cause of dissension was found m the 
p06l1 ion of the African rare; and the ascend- 
d encv in the national councils of mm 
ple< w d to an aggressive and unconstitu- 
tional Abolition policy, has brought our 
country to the condition of "the Hon- 
divided against itself." The danger to the 
Union began where statesmen had foreseen 
i if it began in the triumph of a sectional 
party, founded on principles of revolutionary 

hostility to the Constitution and the laws. 
The leaders of this party were pledged to a 
conflict with rights recognized and sheltered 
by the Constitution. They called this conflict 
-irrepressible;" and whenever one party is 
determined to attack what another is deter- 
mined to defend, a conflict can always be 
made "irrepressible." They counted on 
an easy triumph through the aid of insur- 
ant slaves, and, in this reliance 
were careless how soon they provoked 
L collision. Democrats and Conserva- 
tive strove to avert the conflict. Hiey 
saw that Union was the paramount A- 
teresl of their country, and they stood *y 
tll( , „, T; „ bond of Union, the Constitution 
of the United States. They were contest 
t0 i,., V r debatable questions undent to the 
high tribunal framed to decide them ; they 
preferred it to the sword as an arbd, r 1 e. 



t ween the States ; tliey strove hard to merit 

the title which their opponents gave them 

in scorn — the title of "Union-savers." We 

will not at length rehearse their efforts. In 

the Thirty-sixth Congress the Republican 

leaders refused their assent to the Crittenden 

Compromise. On this point the testimony 

of Mr. Douglas will suffice. He said: 

"I believe this to be ;i fair basis ol amicable ad- 
justment. 11 you ol i : ;■ ■ mii side are not 
williDg to accept this, nor the proposition of the 
Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Urittenden), pray tell 
as what you are willing to dot [ address the inquiry 
to the Republicans alone, for the ^reason that, ;/, tin 
Committee of Thirteen, a few dayt ago, every member 
from the South, including those from the cotton Slates 
(Messrs. Davis and Toombs), expressed their read, 
to accept the proposition oi myi enerable friend I 
Kentucky, Mr. Crittenden, as a final settlement ol 
the controversy, if tendered and sustained by the 
Republican members. Hence the sole responsibility 
of our disagi < t nti /;/. and the only difficulty in the toi y 
of an amicable adjustment, is with the Republican 
party. ' '—Jan. 3, 1861. 

The Peace Congress was another means 

by which the border States strove to avert. 

the impending strife. How the Republican 

leaders then conspired against the peace of 

their country may he seen in a letter from ' 
Senator Chandler, of Michigan, to the Gov- 
ernor of that Stale : 

" To His Excellency, Justin Blair: 

"Governor Bingham and thyself telegraphed yon 
on Saturday, ;it tin- request of Massachusetts and 
Nt-w York, to send delegates to the Peace or Com- 
promise Congress. They admit that we were right 
and that tin y were wrong; that no Republican State 
should have sent delegates; but they are here and 
cannot uet away. Ohio, Indiana and Rhode Island 
are caving in, and there is danger of Illinois; and 
now they ben ns Rw God's sake to come to their 
rescue, and save the Republican party from rapture. 
I hope you will send stiff- backed men or none. The 
whole thing was gotten up against my judgment and 
advice, and will end in thin smoke, ":stiii l hope as 
a matter of courtesy to some of our erring brethren 
that you will send the delegates. 

' 'Truly, your friend, 

• - /,. < 'II AMH.KR. ' ' 

"P. s. — Some of the manufactui ing states think 
that a riLrlit would be awful. Without a little blood 
letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be 
woi th a rush. 

"Washington, Feb. 11, isci. " 

In Pennsylvania, too, the same spirit pre- 
vailed. It was not seen how necessarily 

her position united her in interest with the 
border Stales. She has learned it since, 

from contending armies trampling out her 
ii.i'M 3ts and deluging her fields with blood. 
Governor Curtin sent bo the Peace Congress 
Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Meredith. 

Mr. Wilmot was Chiefly known from the 
connection of his name with the attempt to 
embroil the country by the "Wilmot Pro- 
viso," baffled by patriotic statesmanship, in 
winch Clay and "Webster joined with the 



Democratic leaders; just as Clay and Jack- 
son had joined in the Tariff Compromise of 
1833. Mr. Meredith had published his belief 
that the mutterings of the rising storm were 
what he called " stiidulous cries," unworthy 
Of the slightest attention. 

By Mr. Lincoln's election, in November, 
lsi;o, the jiower to save or destroy the Union 
was in the hands of his party ; and no adjust- 
ment was possible with men who rejected 
the judgment of the Supreme Court, who 
scorned conciliation and compromise, and 
who looked to a " little bloodletting" to ce- 
ment the American Union. Till this time, 
the Union men of the South had controlled, 
with little difficulty, the small but restless 
class among them who desired a separate 
nationality. The substantial interests of 
the South, especially the Blaveholding in- 
ti rest, were drawn reluctantly into seces- 
sion. Gen. P. P. Blair, of Missouri, an 
eminent Republican, said very truly, in the 
last Congress ; 

"Every man acquainted with the facts - knows 
thai It is fallacious to call this -a slaveholders' re- 
bellion.' * * * * A closer rcrutiny demonstrates 
the contrary to be true; such a scrutiny demon- 
strates that the rebellion originated chiefly with the 
non- slaveholders resident in the strongholds of the 
institution, not springing, however, from any love 
of slavery, but from an antagonism ol race and hos- 
tility to the idea ol equality with the blacks involved 
in simple emancipation. " ' 

It was the triumph of the Ab< litionists over 

the Democrats and Conservatives of the 
North, that secured a like triumph to the 
secessionists over the Union men of the 
South. The John Brown raid was taken as 
a practical exposition of the doctrine of 
"irrepressible conflict." The exultation 
over its momentary success, the lamentation 
over its failure, had been swelled by the Abo- 
litionists, so as to seem a general expression 
of Northern feeling. Pints and rescues hail 
nullified the constitutional provision lor the 
return of fugitives. The false pretence that 
slavery would monopolize the territories, $ 
when we had no territories in v\ liicli it could 
exist, bad been used as a means of constant ■■>■. 
tatioii against slavery in the Southern States. 
A plan of attack upon it had been published 
in "Helper's hook," formally endorsed and 
recommended by the leaders of the party 
tllat was about to assume the Administra- 
tion of the Federal Government— leaders 



who openly inculcated contempt for the 
Constitution, contempt for the Fupreme 
Court, and professed to follow a "higher 
law." Thus the flame of revolution at the 
South was kindled and fed with fuel 
furnished by the Abolitionists. It might 
seem superfluous to advert now to what is 
past and irrevocable^ were it no1 that it is 
against the same men and the same influ- 
ences, still dominant in the councils of the 
Administration, that an appeal is now to be 
made to the intelligence of the people. The 
Abolitionists deprecate these allusions to 
the past. To cover up their own tracks, 
they invite us to spend all our indignation 
upou "Southern traitors;" but truth compels 
us to add, that, in the race of treason, 
the Northern traitors to the Constitution 
had the start. They tell us that slavery was 
the cause of the war- therefore, the Union 
is to be restored by waging a war upon 
slavery. This is not true; or only true in 
the sense that any institution, civil or reli- 
gious, may be a cause of war, if war is made 
upon it. Nor is it a just conclusion (hat if 
you take from your neighbor his " man-ser- 
vant or his maid, or anything that is his," 
you will thus establish harmony between 
you. No danger to the Union arose from 
slavery whilst the peopleof each State dealt 
calmly and intelligently with the question 
within their own State limits. "Where little 
importance attached to it, it soon yielded to 
moral and economical considerations, leaving 
the negro in a position of social and politi- 
cal subordination no where more clearly 
marked than in the Constitution and laws 
of Pennsylvania. The strife began when 
people in States where it was an immaterial 
question undertook to prescribe the course 
of duty upon it to States in which it was a 
question of great importance and difficulty. 
This interference became more dan 
when attempts were made to use the power 
of the General Government, instituted for 
the benefit of nil the States, to the injuryand 
proscription of the interests of some of the 
States. It was not merely a danger to the 
institution of slavery, but to our whole po- 
litical system, in which separate and distinct 
colonics became, by the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, "free and independent States," 



and afterwards established a Federal I uion 

under the Constitution of the United States. 
That instrument, witli scrupulous care, dis- 
criminates the powers delegated to the Gen- 
eral Government from those reserved "to 
the Stati <dy, or to the people." 

And lei it be noted, that in speaking of the 
powers so delegated and reserved, we refer 

to no vague doctrines or ; qs, but to 

the clear pro isione of the \\ ritteu instrument 
which it is the duty of every citizen, and 
< ■ pecially of every public functionary, to re- 
spect and maintain. The protection of 

American liberty against the encroachments 
of centralization was left to the States by 
the Cramers of t lie Constitution, i la milt on, 
the most indulgent of them to Federal 
power, says ; " It may be safely received as 
an axiom in our political system, that the 
Slate Governments will, in all possible con- 
tingencies, afford complete security against 
invasions of public liberty by the na- 
tional authority." Who can be blind 
to the consequences that have fol- 
lowed the departure from the true prin- 
ciples of our Government? "Abolition" 
vies with "secession" in sapping the very 
foundations of the structure reared by our 
forefathers. In Pennsylvania, the party on 
whose acts you will pass at the ballot-box 
has trampled upon the gnat rights of | 
SOnal liberty and the freedom of the pie--, 
which every man who can read may find 
asserted in the Constitution of the State and 
the Constitution of the United States. The 
dignity of our ( ommonwealth has been in- 
sulted bathe outrages perpetrated upon her 
citizens. At Philadelphia and at Harris- 
burg, proprietors of newspapers have been 
seized at midnight and hurried offto military 

ins beyond the limits of the State. Agaii 
acts like these, perpetrated before the eyes of 
the municipal and State auth< ritii 3, there is 
neither protection nor redress. The seizure of 
a journal at West Chester was afterwards the 
subject of a suit for damages in the Supreme 
Court of Pennsylvania. It came to trial 
before I aiei Justice Lowrie. Rehearsing 
icienl principles of English and Amer- 
ican justice, he condemned the acts of the 
;:! cilice] s as violations of the law that 
binds alike the private citizen and the pub- 



6 



lie functionary. He said: "All public func- 
tionaries in this land are under the law, and 
■ . from the highest to the lowest, are 
above it." Impatient at any restraint from 
law, a partisan majority in Congress has- 
tened to ] to take from the State 
courts to the United - - courts, all i 
or prosecutions "for tn - - wrongs 
done or committed by virtue or tinder color 
of any authority derived from or exerci 
under the President of the United States;' 1 
and such authority was declared to be a full 
defence for the wrongdoer in any action, 
civil or criminal. The American Executive 
is, as the word imports, the executor of the 
duly enacted law's. Yet the pretension is 
made that his will ean lake the place Of the 
laws. The liberty, the character of every 
citizen, is put at the mercy of new function- 
aries called "provost marshals." Secret 
accusation before these officials takes the 
place of open hearing before a lawful mi 
trate, and no writ of huhum corpv* may in- 
quire the cause of the arrest. To illegal ar- 
rests have been added the mockery of a trial 
of a private citizen for his political opinions 
before a court-martial, ending in the inflic- 
tion of a new and outrageous penalty, in- 
vented by the Presidenl of the United States. 
We need not comment upon acts like Cb 
The President Of the United States has no au- 
thority, in 'peace or war to try, even an en- 
listed soldier by court-martial, save by virtue 
and in strict conformity with the military 
law laid down in the act of Congress "es- 
tablishing rules and articles for the govern- 
ment of the armies of the United States." 
Y et by his proclamation of September 21th, 
1863, he has assumed to make all citizens 
amenable to military courts, lie has vio- 
lated the great principle of free government, 
on which Washington conducted the war of 
the [{evolution, and Madison the war of 
1S12— the principle of the subordination of 
the military to the civil power, lb- has as- 
sumed to put " martial law," which is the 
rule of force at a spot where all laws are si 
[enced, in the place of civil ju ough^ 
out the land, and has tin 
of tl ballot- 
box. These ait" not occasional acts, done 
in hade, or heat, or ignorance; but a new 



system of government put in the place of 
that ordained and established by the people. 
That the Queen could not do what he could, 
was Mr. Seward's boast to the British Min- 
ister. The "military arrests" of Mr. Stan- 
ton received the "hearty commendation" of 
invention that renominated Governor 
Curtin ; and it pledged him and bis party to 
" hearty co-operation" in such acts of the 
Administration in future. Such is the de- 
grading platform on which a candidate 
for Chief Magistrate of Pennsylvania 
stands before her people. These preten- 
sions to arbitrary power give ominous 
significance to a late change in our 
military establishment. The time-honored 
American system of calling on the 
States for drafts frOm their militia, lias been 
replaced by a Federal conscription, on the 
model of European despotisms. We would 
not minister to the excitement which it has 
caused among nan of all parties. Its con- 
stitutionality will be t. ire the courts. 
If adjudged to be within the power of Con- 
ine people will decide on the pro- 
priety of a stretch of power on which the 
British Parliament — styled omnipotent — has 
never ventured. On this you will puss at 
the polls, and the nexl - will not be 
deaf to the voice >^' the people. For all 
political evils, a constitutional remedy yet 
remains, in the ballot-box. We will not enter 
tain a fear that it is not safe in the guardian- 
ship of a free people. If men in office 
should seek to perpetuate their power by 
wresting from the people of Pennsylvania 
the right of suffrage— if the servants of the 
people should rebel against their master — 
on them will rest the responsibility of an 
attempt at revolution, of which no man can 
foresee the consequences or the end. But 
in now addressing you upon the political 
of the times, we assume that tin- 
institutions of our country arc destined to 
ire. 
The approaching election derives further 
importance from the influence it will exer- 
cise upon the policy of the Government! 
The aim of men not blinded by fanaticism 
and party spirit would be to reap the best 
fruit from the victories achieved by our 
gallant armies— the best fruit would be peace 



audi the restoration of the Union. Such is 

not the aim of the party in power. Dom- 
inated by its most bigoted members, it- urges 
a war for the negro and not for the Union. 
U avows the design to protract the war till 
slavery shall be abolished in all the Southern 
States ; in the language of on pamph- 

leteers, "how can a man, hoping and pray- 
ing for the destruction of slavery, 
that the war shall be a shprl i 
.Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, tin" Republican 
leader in the last House of Representative , 
declared, "The Union shall never, with 
my consent, be restored under tin Const itu- 
lini) as. it is, with slavery to be protected by 
it. 1 ' The same spirit appears in Mr. Lin- 
coin's late answer to citizens of Louisiana 
who desired the return of that State under 
its present Constitution. Mr. Lincoln post- 
poned them till thai Constitution shall lie 
amended. The Abolitionists desire the war 
to last till freedom is secured to ail the 
slaves. Hordes of politicians, and con- 
tractors, and purveyors, who fatten on the 
war, desire it to last forever. When the 
slaves are all emancipated by the Federal 
arms, a constant military intervention will 
ho needed to keep them above or equal with 
the white race in the Southern States. Peace 
has no place in their platform. It pro- 
claims confiscation and abolition as the 
objects of the war, and the Southern 
leader catches up the words to stimulate 
his followers to fight to the last. It is not 
the interest of Pennsylvania that a fanatical 
faction shall pervert and protract the war, 
for ruinous, perhaps unattainable ends. 
What the North needs i- the return 
South, with its people, its territory, its 
staples, to complete the integrity of our 
common country. This, and not mere de- 
vastation and social confusion, would be the 
aim of patriots and statesmen. The Aboli- 
tion policy promises us nothing better than 
a Southern Poland, ruled by a Northern 
despotism. But history is full of examples 
how wise rulers have assuaged civil dis- 
cord by moderation and justice, while 
bigots and despots, relying solely on 
force, have been baffled by feeble opponents. 
That a temperate constitutional policy will 
fail, in our ease, to reap the fruit of success 



in arm:-, cannot be known \iii if is tried. 
The tines are critical. France, umler a 
powc rfnland ambitious monarch, is entering 
on the seen:', willing again to play an im- 
portant part, in an American revolution, 
The English Government is hostile to us,; 
it has got all it wanted from abolition, ami 
will have nothing more to do with it. The 
•he presses under 
, control, pRpose reunion, preferru . 
perhaps, even . enee upon 

European powers. But from many par,ts of 
the South, and aero- the picket lines, and 
from the prisoners and the wounded, has 
come the proof of a desire among the people 
of the South to return to constitutional re- 
lations with the people of the North. Early 
in the ni, desire was shown in 

North Carolina, one of the old thirteen 
associated with Pennsylvania on thepage 
of Revolutionary history. But the majority 
in. Congress made basic to show that Abo- 
lition, not reunion, was their aim. In 
a moment of depressipn, on the ~'2dot .luly, 
18G1, being the day after the battle of Bull 
Run, they allowed the passag i of a resolu- 
tion, offered by Crittenden, defining a 
policy for the restoration of the Union. Hut 
they suon rallied, and filled the statute-bi 
with acts of confiscation, abolition, and 
emancipation, against the remonstrances of 
eminent j; conservative men of all 

parties. Mr. Lincoln, too, yielding, he said, 
'•topri ssure," put his proclamations in place 
of the Constitution and the laws. Tims 
every interest a; South- 

ern people were enlisted on the side id' r< - 
sistancc by the policy of a party which. 
as JMr. Stevens. said, will not consent to a 
restoration of tl : ] u " the Con- 

ion as it is." It is this policy that has 
protracted the war, and is now the greatest 
obsl tele to its termination. 

The reunion of the slate-, can alone give 
them their old security at home and power 
and dignity abroad. Th's end can never 1 e 
reached upon the principles of the party now 
in power. Their principles are radically 
false, and can never lead to a pood conclu- 
sion. Their hope of setting up the negro in 
the place of the white man runs counter to 
the laws of race, the laws of nature. Their 



8 



statesmanship has been Weighed in the Lai- 1 
anee and found wanting; their 'Tittle 
blood-letting" has proved a delnge. Their 
interference with our armies has often frus- 
trated and never aided their success, till it 
has become a military proverb that the 
best thing for a general is to he out of 
reach from Washington. The party was 
founded upon the political and moral 
heresy of opposition to Compromise, 
which is the only means of Union among 
States, and of peace and good will on 
earth among men. 

In a popular Government, the people 
are sovereign, and the sound sense of the 
whole community corrects, at the polls, 
the errors of political parties. The people 
of Pennsylvania have seen, with regret, 
the unconstitutional aims of the Aboli- 
tionists substituted for the original ob- 
jects of the war. They have seen with 
indignation many gallant soldiers of the 
Union driven from its service, because 
they have not bowed down to the Abolition 
idol. They will see with horror the war 
protracted in order to secure the triumph of 
a party platform, or, as Mr. Chandler said, 
"to save the Republican party from rup- 
ture.'' The lime is now at hand when the 
voice of the people will be heard. The 
overthrow of the Abolitionists at the polls 
and the re-establishment of constitutional 
principles at the North is the first, the indis- 
pensable step towards the restoration of the 
Union and the vindication of civil liberty. 
To this great service to his country each 
citizen may contribute by his vote. Thus 
the people of the North may themselves 
extend the Constitution to the people of the 
South.' It would not be a specious offer of 
politicians, to be observed with no better 
faith .than the resolutions of duly, '61. It 
would be a return to the national policy of the 
better days of the Republic, through the intel- 
ligence of the people, enlightened by experi- 
ence. It would strengthen the Govern- 
ment; for a constitutional Government is 
strong when exercising with vigor its legiti- 
mate powers, ami is weak when it sets an ex- 



ample of revolutionary violence by invading 
the rights of the people. < )ur principles and 
our candidates are known to you. The 
resolutions of the late Convention at Harris- 
burg were, with some additions, the same 
that had been adopted by the Democracy in 
several States, and by the General Assem- 
bly of Pennsylvania. They declare au- 
thoritatively the principles of the Demo- 
cratic part}-. It is, as it has always been, 
for the Union and the Constitution against 
all opposers. The twelfth resolution de- 
clares, "that while this General Assembly 
condemns and denounces the faults of the 
Administration and the encroachments of 
the Abolitionists, it does, also, most 
thoroughly condemn and denounce the 
heresy of secession as unwarranted b} r the 
Constitution, and destructive alike of the se- 
curity and perpetuity of Government and 
of the peace and liberty of the people and 
it does hereby most solemnly declare that 
the people of this State are unalterably op- 
posed to any division of the Union, and will 
persistently exert their whole influence and 
power, under the Constitution, to maintain 
and defend it." 

"We have renominated Chief Justice Low- 
rie for the bench which he adorns. Our 
candidate for Governor, Judge "Woodward, 
in his public and private character, affords 
the best assurance l bat he will bring honesty, 
capacity, firmness and patriotism to the di- 
rection of the affairs of the Commonwealth. 
Long withdrawn, by judicial functions, from 
the political arena, he did not withhold his 
warning voice when conservative men took 
counsel together upon the dangers that 
menaced our country. His speech at the 
town meeting at Philadelphia in December, 
1860, has been vindicated by subsequent 
events as a signal exhibition of statesmanlike 
Bagacity. 

Under his administration we may hope 
that Pennsylvania, with God's blessing, will 
resume her place as "the Keystone of the 
Federal arch." 

CHAKLES J. Bidpi.k, Chairman. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 028 973 



k 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 028 973 1 



pennttlife* 

pH8.5 



